When I got the call that I was scheduled for a morning dive in Silfra on Thursday, I must, admit, I got a bit nervous. I got my PADI license (needed to dive in Silfra) in the beautiful island of Koh Tao, Thailand 2 years earlier and had not so much as touched a BCD (Buoyancy Control Device) since then.
Adding to my nervousness was the fact that since Þingvellir is almost as close to my home as downtown Reykjavík, I had decided to drive to Silfra myself. I hadn’t really done any research on where the meeting point was and decided just to wing it and see where I would end up. The dive was scheduled at 8AM so I started the day early with a big breakfast and an even bigger cup of coffee.
After about a couple of minutes’ drive, I ended up behind a mini-van, marked with the Dive.is logo, the company I was scheduled to go diving with. I quietly whispered to myself, “God wills it!”, it was clear, I was destined to go on this dive.
At the meeting point, we got a security briefing before we were literally dressed into our dry-suits. This was a level of service I had never experienced before. They set up all the gear, helped you into your dry-suit, put your neoprene gloves and hood on and strapped you into your BCD. The only thing I had to do was to walk about 100m to the dive site and spit in my mask. Top notch service!
For those of you out there that have not heard about Silfra before, it is basically a fissure between two tectonic plates, the North American and the Eurasian located about 48km outside of Reykjavík. It is listed as one of the best diving spots in the world due to how clear the water is and you sort of get the feeling that you are floating in space. The reason for this amazing water clarity is mainly due to how cold the water is (2-4°C) and the fact that the glacial water is filtered through 50km of underground lava fields for around 100 years.
When I finally stepped into the water I was pretty surprised by how little I could feel the cold. The only parts of the body that got a little chilled were the lips and the index finger but once you have been in the water for some time you forget about it. The tour consisted of two 40 minute dives, which believe me, is plenty enough! Between dives, we were offered cookies and delicious hot chocolate to get some much-needed warmth and calories to keep us going.
I could go on and on about how amazing the experience was and how it all went down but they say a picture is worth a thousand words. If that’s the case, a video must be like a million times better than that, so feel free to consider the video here below my first novel. The video is a bit rough, just my view of the diving tour, and of course, it doesn’t do the experience justice, but it should give you a bit of an idea of what to expect.
